naxspider.blogg.se - Progressive politics definition

#Progressive politics definition full#
#Progressive politics definition trial#

You think that the state has no right to kill, and that putting people to death to show that killing is wrong will always be a self-defeating policy.You believe in celebrating diversity, while also recognizing that having women and people of color proportionately represented among the class of oppressors is not the goal we should be aiming for.You think it's crazy to use the Old Testament as a policy guide for the 21st century.You think that wealth, not just income, should be taxed.You think it's wrong to allow individuals to accumulate wealth without limits, and that the highest incomes should be capped well before they begin to threaten community and democracy.

You think that the legal doctrine granting corporations the same constitutional rights as natural persons is absurd and must be overturned.You think that regulating big corporations isn't enough, and that such corporations, if they are allowed to exist at all, must either serve the common good or be put into public receivership.You think that a class system which forces some people to do dirty, dangerous, boring work all the time, while others get to do clean, safe, interesting work all the time, can never deliver social justice.You think that as a society we have a collective obligation to provide everyone who is willing and able to work with a job that pays a living wage and offers dignity.

#Progressive politics definition full#

You think that strengthening the rights of all workers to unionize and bargain collectively is a useful step toward full economic democracy.

You think that electoral democracy is not enough, and that democracy must also be participatory and extend to workplaces.

You think that electoral reform should include instant run-off voting, publicly-financed elections, easy ballot access for all parties, and proportional representation.

You think public education should be free, not just from kindergarten through high school, but as far as a person is willing and able to go.

#Progressive politics definition trial#

You think political leaders who engage in "preemptive war" and invasions should be brought to trial for crimes against humanity and judged against the standards of international law established at Nuremberg after World War Two.

troops should be brought home not only from Afghanistan and Iraq, but from all 130 countries in which the U.S. military spending is an obscene waste of resources, and that the only freedom this spending protects is the freedom of economic elites to exploit working people all around the planet.

You think that human rights ought always to trump property rights.

You think health care is a basic human right, and that single-payer national health insurance is a worthwhile reform on our way toward creating a non-profit national health care service.

So who is a progressive? You might be one if So it might be worthwhile to put these criteria on the table, not to draw boundaries and hand out membership badges, but to spark a conversation about the common ground of ideas and values on which progressives stand, and to underscore the point that the center is not the left. Yet if the label "progressive" has meaning at all, it is only because of some shared criteria we have in mind when we use it. No one, of course, has the authority to decide who is a progressive and who isn't. It would be no surprise, then, if many people were wondering, Just who is a progressive? Others see Obama as a moderate Democrat only slightly less friendly to corporate capital and to the military-industrial complex than the Republican John McCain. The leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama, has been called a "leftist" by Republican flacks and a "progressive" by some of his supporters. In the propaganda wars that surround elections, political labels often become detached from reality.